


Superposition / Decoherence

by accessdenied



Series: The Fall, and What's Left [1]
Category: Remember Me (Video Game)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Families of Choice, Gen, Hurt/Comfort
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-23
Updated: 2016-12-23
Packaged: 2018-09-11 11:45:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,594
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8978356
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/accessdenied/pseuds/accessdenied
Summary: Nilin starts a habit of ignoring some crucial advice. Bad Request lives, Olga learns, and ultimately Edge still gets what he wants. Episode 6.5 of sorts, carried through to the end of the game.





	

**Author's Note:**

> The Les Mis reference is entirely Amy's fault for beating the game and saying 'rip cyborg enjolras'

"Leave him," Edge urges. "There isn't time."

"No! He saved my life. Would you want me to leave _you_ behind?"

"Yes," he says frankly, but Nilin can't unpack that now, not with her heartbeat pounding so desperately in her ears, not with the facility starting to tremble beneath her feet.

She doesn't even know if Bad Request is still _alive_ \--

Nilin isn't exactly strong enough to deadlift a body, but adrenaline is a wonderful thing and he's not particularly bulky and they don't have far to go. She rolls him into the pneumatic coffin and drags all his limbs into place and slides herself on top of him, swallowing her claustrophobia and holding her breath as the lid descends and they're plunged into darkness.

This ride isn't as cold as her first--was it really only a day ago, that she had _nothing_ of herself?--but it is significantly more turbulent, rocked by the shockwaves of the detonating laboratory. She braces her back against the lid and winces at how Bad Request must be suffering, limp and unable to keep himself from slamming into the metal at every turn.

Assuming he survived Dr. Quaid's handling.

Assuming he survived Johnny Greenteeth's handling.

Nilin could easily find out, but she doesn't want to just yet, can't deal with being trapped in a coffin with the corpse of the sweet boy she welcomed into this fight. Instead, she clings to the cheap plasticky fabric of his jumpsuit and chokes back bile and thinks as hard as she can about the shape of his mind when she first went digging through it, as though she could put him back together by mere proximity.

The coffins are guided on a track before they wash up in the depths of the Leapers' territory, she remembers. It jolts around several corners and down a violent drop or two; it wasn't built for _comfort_ , after all. Eventually the coffin exits onto a slow-moving river of God only knows what, and Nilin inhales carefully--sweat and fear and blood and scorched metal and rot--before reaching out with a trembling hand to press two fingers against the side of Bad Request's throat.

_There_ \-- his pulse is weak and thready but definitely present, and she sighs in relief before the thought overtakes her: his heart is beating _for now_.

She's panicking. She's officially panicking. The coffin hasn't yet come to a stop but they need to get out _immediately_ , they need to get to solid ground, they need to get to the SAT terminal that ought to be nearby--

Nilin plants her hands against the metal floor of the coffin on either side of Bad Request's lolling head and shoves her back against the lid as hard as she can, and it creaks slightly open before the whole thing keels over sideways, filthy water trickling in through the crack and soaking into her hair, and she can't help the sob that rips itself out of her chest. His lifeless body is pressing down on her like a sack of bricks and she can't seem to drag enough air into her lungs and her boots are scrabbling for purchase against the lid but she can't bend her legs properly, she _can't_ , they're both going to die in this little metal box--

One more desperate shove and the coffin pops open, nearly capsizing in the process, and Nilin seizes the rim to stabilize it with her heart hammering in her ribcage. After a few tense seconds rocking back and forth, she strains her head up and nearly starts crying when she sees the pile of discarded coffins and the gentle slope of trash only a couple meters away. Carefully, carefully, she eases herself out from under Bad Request and splashes down into the sewage and tows the makeshift raft to shore, dragging it into the beam of a flickering artificial light.

Of course, last time she was here, the place was crawling with Leapers. She freezes and stares into the darkness, but nothing emerges and there's no sound save the gentle dripping of water. Then Bad Request makes a small choking noise at her feet and she jumps about a meter in the air before falling to her knees to help roll him over onto his back with a pained moan.

It's a bit of an understatement to say he doesn't look too good.

There are bruises starting to blossom all along the left side of his head, which is also sticky with drying blood where the skin split from the force of the impact. Long, finger-shaped imprints mark his skin where Johnny Greenteeth seized him to slam him into the floor. The prison jumpsuit is thin enough that she can see that something is definitely wrong with a couple of ribs after the kick he suffered.

"Bad Request?" Nilin says quietly, hovering close, afraid to touch him and make things worse somehow.

A faint _mngh_ is the only answer.

"Wake up. Please. You're free now, it's okay." She's breathing too fast, near to hyperventilation, black dots swarming in the corners of her eyes. His right arm moves, jerkily, up to his head, missing its target and smacking into the coffin as his face contorts in agony.

"Have pain," he groans, coughing weakly. "Am pain."

"No," Nilin says, her heart in her throat. "No, no, _no_. Bad Request!"

Suddenly his eyes snap open and slowly focus, scanning her face, looking confused and despairing and hopeful all at once. "You? I remember. The one who, who took the doctor out of my head?"

"Yes," she gasps out. "That's me. Nilin. I'm your friend."

"Nilin," he sighs, eyelids drooping shut. "Can't think. Hurts."

"I know. It's okay. I'm going to make it better, okay?" Her fingertips skitter over his shaved head, both of them wincing when she finds the beginnings of a large lump over his ear.

"Probably a severe concussion," Edge says out of nowhere, offhand, and she startles.

"If you're not actually going to help I would be _much_ obliged if you would stay quiet so I can _focus_ ," she says tensely, and the line goes silent.

"Sorry," Bad Request says in a small voice, and Nilin waves her hands frantically.

"No, no. You're doing fine. I was talking to someone else." She rocks back on her heels and searches her mind in vain for some kind of knowledge on brain damage of the old-fashioned variety. All that turns up is that it's a bad idea to go to sleep, and a good idea to get to a SAT terminal as soon as possible. She swears under her breath, then steels herself. "Okay. This is what we're going to do. I need you to get up and walk. It's not far." Hopefully.

"Okay," he says vaguely, but manages to grip the edges of the coffin for support. One of her hands cups the back of his head to protect it from further injury and the other ends up under his armpit, helping him slowly lift his torso. When he's sitting up she lets him pause to catch his breath, ragged with the pain, but as it starts to turn into wet coughing she decides they _really_ need to get moving.

Nilin loops her arms around his waist and they manage through an uncoordinated dance of pushing and pulling to get him upright. Swaying, and hazy, but upright nonetheless. She drags one of his arms over her shoulders and takes some of his weight and looks around, mind racing in its attempt to recall the location of the deep SAT terminal. After a minute she picks a direction and hopes for the best, and the two of them stumble towards a hole in a barricade of scrap metal.

The clean white lines of the terminal off in the distance are an indescribable relief. She lets go and Bad Request continues to stagger forward a few more steps out of sheer momentum until he sags into the wall, clinging to the filthy surface with his fingertips like the ground is spinning beneath him; the SAT terminal opens its hatch and beeps reassuringly at his presence as it detects his injuries. Nilin gently takes his hand and presses it palm down against the dispenser pad to activate it, trying not to worry about his pallor or his cold sweat or his harsh breathing.

Slowly, slowly, over the course of approximately four entire lifetimes, the color returns to his skin and the lump on his head recedes and his breathing eases. Only when the orange glow around his palm stops and the SAT terminal beeps its completion does she release him, and he looks at his hand in astonishment.

"How are you feeling?" she asks tentatively.

"No pain," he replies, flexing his fingers, and the sheer wonder in his voice makes her heart clench. His eyes, no longer glassy, glance over her, and he points at the blood and the taser burns on her shirt. "You're hurt?"

"Oh, right." Nilin slaps her hand onto the terminal as well and lets it heal the few wounds she sustained fighting Quaid's Enforcers and Johnny Greenteeth. When it's done she steps up to him and bites her lip. He's looking at her quizzically, but she's looking past him to the faint flicker of his Sensen's projection. She doesn't want to see how bad the damage is, but she needs to.

"Turn around, please, and put your head down." Bad Request obeys without question in short, shuffling motions, and she gets up on tiptoe to better inspect his Sensen. Its light is stronger than it was when she first saw him, and only a few staticky glitches cross the hologram in the minute she's watching it. She lets out a sigh of relief. "That's good. Really good. I need to... Is it okay if I look inside your mind?"

He shrugs and mutters, "Don't know what you'll find. So empty, so true."

Nilin forces herself to stay calm. "Can I try, though?"

He turns his head to look at her curiously. "Doctor never... never asked."

"I'm not the doctor," she says bitterly, "and he's dead now, anyway. I'll only do it if you say I can do it."

He wets his lips and shifts from one foot to the other, obviously nervous, but turns back around and clenches his fists and says, "Yes."

Nilin closes her eyes and takes a deep breath, then lifts her hand and hacks into his Sensen. It's just as she feared--there's _nothing_ there, almost nothing, a vast empty room compared to the buzzing vibrant knot that used to fill his head. It's terrible, it's impossible to fix, it's hopeless--

She trips over a faint memory, and blinks in surprise, and inspects it closer. It's the stark walls of his cell, the nauseating sensation of it being transferred. Herself standing there, staring at him with such desperation and such horror and such sadness and he has no idea who she is, save for this nagging nameless familiarity, and then he was dragged away and the memory halts.

Now that she knows what she's looking for, there's more of these faint memories, dozens of them-- Quaid screaming inside his skull, and then silence; pain, and then relief from the pain. He's flattened but not gone, no more than she was when Edge first pulled her out of La Bastille. The foundation has a handful of Leaper-esque sinkholes, but most of it is solid. It can be rebuilt anew.

Nilin draws back into herself, then breaks the connection, her vision blurry. "Okay. I'm done."

Bad Request turns around, surprised again. "It didn't hurt."

"It's not supposed to." Slowly, she pulls him into a hug and rests her chin on his shoulder, and he flinches and goes tense at the physical contact before relaxing in tiny increments and settling his arms around her shoulders, so light she can barely feel it.

She doesn't want to let go, but she can feel him starting to shiver in the cold and damp, and so she draws back and wipes her eyes and grabs his hand.

"Come on," she says. "I know a place where we'll be safe."

* * *

Getting up to the Leaking Brain is much more difficult this time around, with no advertisement drones leading the way and everything looking so different now that the slum's been drained and ravaged. The only saving grace is that 404 appears to be completely deserted of residents and Leapers alike.

(There are bodies slumped against buildings and littering the emptied canals. Nilin tries not to look too closely at them.)

Another complication is the fact that while Bad Request is doing better--walking more-or-less steadily, looking around at everything with clear eyes and a mixture of curiosity and disgust--he's still nowhere near as agile as she is, and she wants to stick to the safest, most solid path. She thinks of the Remembranes back in Saint-Michel; he accidentally broke a ladder and a window, after all, and that's when he still had access to all his physical experience.

She's eyeing a half-broken catwalk, trying to judge if he's capable of making the jump to the other side, when the realization hits her like a brick and she stops short.

"For the love of God, Nilin, you're a _memory hunter_ ," she mutters to herself, and turns around at Bad Request's questioning noise. "Can't believe I didn't think of it before. I _have_ one of your memories."

He furrows his brow slightly, like he can't decide whether or not to be suspicious. "You do?"

"You gave it to me, the first time we met," she explains. "In the Saint-Michel rotunda. Edge had you scout a path to Kaori Sheridan's office, and then we met up, and you gave me the path. It's such a small thing, but it might help a little..."

His frown grows deeper. "Saint-Michel, Edge, Kaori Sheridan?"

Nilin's almost giddy. "I'll do better than tell you. I'll give the memory _back_."

Hope flits across his face before he can squash it. "That's possible?"

"Oh." That's a bit of a snag. "I'm not sure. It ought to be? Stealing is merely data transfer, so in theory returning what was stolen would just be data transfer in the other direction. I've never done it before, though, not that I can remember, so it's up to you if you want to risk it."

Bad Request looks away and shrugs. "What's another hole in my head?"

"It could be _dangerous_ ," she says. "But it could also mend things. If you want, I'll try."

He nods, and she lifts her hand to his Sensen, focusing intently on the short chain of memories and making sure they're all in order before she gives an experimental push. There's a brief crackle of data flow and then he winces, rubbing his temples.

"Bad Request. Are you okay? Did it work? Oh, God, did I hurt you?"

He shakes his head, speaking slowly and pensively. "Yeah, seems so, and it's okay, in that order. I remember talking a lot to someone not there. I remember hacking, but not how to do it. I remember sneaking and running and jumping and climbing." He looks up at her and gives her a wonderfully familiar lopsided smile. "I remember not being very good at it."

Multiple sentences in a row. An hour ago, she was afraid he might never do that again.

She drops her head and laughs. "I crashed through some poor soul's skylight, thanks to you. But I also managed not to get shot by drones, so it all evens out."

"That's good." Bad Request glances down and flushes slightly, murmuring, "I was so excited to do that for you, Nilin. So afraid of fucking up. Spent the whole time looking forward to meeting you, to having you open up my head. Is that... weird? I think it might be weird."

She smiles and he goes even redder. "It's okay to be weird, so long as you're being _you_. I wouldn't worry about it."

"If you say so." He bites his lip and picks at the sleeve of his jumpsuit. "How much farther to, uh... wherever we're going?"

"Not very. I just saw the balloon round the last corner. Across this catwalk and straight up the next building ought to give us a better vantage point, at the very least."

* * *

She makes him stop at every SAT terminal they pass, despite his eventual protests.

"You're walking barefoot through a slum made entirely of raw sewage and rusted metal," she points out bluntly, and he can't really argue with that.

* * *

The Leaking Brain is still mostly broken, dark and empty, but at least it's no longer on fire. Her past guides her to the lounge area behind the curtain, dodging around a high-backed armchair to a narrow hallway that leads to Tommy's personal apartment. (Small and shabby but comfortable, and _very_ easily defended; there are at least two hidden exits she knows of, and probably some she doesn't.)

Tentatively, Nilin knocks on the front door. This entire time she's been focused on getting them here, but now she doesn't know why Tommy's not answering-- it's well past midnight, maybe he's just asleep, or maybe the Leapers or the rioters caught up with him after she descended into the old metro tunnels and he was easily overwhelmed since she left him all alone and he's been--

The door swings open and cuts off her panicked spiral.

"Tommy," she says with a faint, relieved smile. "Mind if we come in? Neither of us can remember where we live."

"Nilin, girl," he grouses, entirely at odds with the painfully soft expression on his face and the way he steps back as an invitation, "if I opened my doors to everyone who told me that, I'd be running a halfway house and not a bar."

* * *

Nilin drops the curtain and slumps into a barstool and Tommy searches her face, apparently not liking what he sees there, judging by the caution in his voice. "How's it going?"

"Alright, I think," she says with forced composure. "He's been more lucid overall since we reached the SAT terminal. Got him all washed up and into some real clothes--thanks for them, by the way, looking at that jumpsuit was making me ill. Gave him a bit to eat, and now he's crashed on the couch. He doesn't remember much of anything other than what Dr. Quaid did to him, of course, and now La Bastille's all blown up, but maybe the Memorize servers have stored backups or something--"

Her rambling cuts off when Tommy gently places a hand over hers. "I meant how's it going _with you_."

"I'm fi--" She chokes on the word. The momentum that's kept her going and going and going ever since she woke up with nothing but a name and a searing pain in her skull has drained away, and she can feel her expression crumble, and something deeper than memory says to her _here, you are safe; with him, you are safe_.

Her shoulders start to shake with quiet sobs. He reaches beneath the bar and pulls out a slightly dusty bottle and two glasses, pouring a generous amount of amber liquid into each. "Don't know if you remember, but back in the good ol' days," he says sardonically, "this used to be your favorite. Expensive as hell, too, so you better plan on robbing a bank before it comes time to close out your tab."

Nilin manages about half a smile. She takes a drink and it burns all the way down to the frozen core of her, and before she can stop herself she finds the whole sick story of La Bastille stumbling off her tongue, from Madame and her memory games to Quaid's depraved experiments to Johnny Greenteeth's contributions as Dr. Green.

When her words trickle to a stop, Tommy takes a long time to respond, staring down at the scratched surface of the bar before slamming his palms against it. "I know some good people who were locked up in there," he says, low and angry. "Some _damn_ good people I never heard from again. And what've I been doing since I got out? Fucking around in this piece of _shit_ bar--"

"Tommy," she pleads, covering his hands with her own. "You couldn't have known. _Nobody_ knew. Even if you had known, you'd've just gotten yourself killed. You're too important for that."

He snorts and drains his glass in one long gulp, but he leaves his other hand where it is and doesn't pull away when she laces their fingers together.

"I _mean_ it," and goddammit all to hell she's starting to cry again. "There's so much of my past I still don't have, but you're my _friend_ , and I want-- I need you to be okay. Please tell me you'll be okay."

"Nilin." His thumb rubs soothing circles on the back of her hand. "I'm here. I'm alive. We both are." He smiles crookedly, the expression pulling on his scars. "And, hell. If the bastards that took my eye couldn't do me in, I'm probably doomed to live to a hundred and twenty, yeah?"

She laughs weakly and scrubs at her eyes with her free palm.

"Get some sleep, sweetheart," Tommy says, squeezing her hand one last time before reaching under the bar and pulling out a heavy metal pipe. "Leapers have all moved on up in the world, it seems, but just in case I'll take the first watch and wake you up in a few hours for the second. Sound good?"

"Yeah," she says, giving in to her bone-deep exhaustion. "Yeah."

Nilin stumbles away from the bar and back to Tommy's apartment, checking on Bad Request still laid out on the beat-up sofa--his pulse slow and steady--before sinking into an armchair and propping her feet up on a crate and letting her eyes close.

She's nearly out when her Sensen crackles to life with a communication. " _Now_ what are you doing," Edge says, more of an accusation than a question. "We must keep moving forward--"

"Edge," she interrupts, too tired to care about the weakness in her tone. "We can't all be fueled by _the glorious pure light of revolution_ like you are, alright? I have to _sleep_. The blood of the martyrs can water the meadows of France in the morning."

He's silent for a long moment, such that she almost drifts off again, but then he says in a quiet, odd voice, "You're right. I need you strong, sister, for all the things that lie before us. Rest up."

The line drops, and she's fast asleep within minutes.

* * *

"Wow," Olga Sedova says, dry humor failing to cover what appears to be actual concern. "You look like death warmed over."

"Long night," Nilin replies shortly. Bad Request is still sleeping, but Tommy has promised to keep an eye on him, and it's past ten in the morning and she can't ignore Edge's impatience any longer. She takes her place in the cramped seat behind Olga's and focuses on securing her harness.

"I'm impressed you have clearance to get into the tower," she says, vaguely parroting something Edge said earlier.

"It's just a cargo bay. Don't hold your breath for the red carpet and the champagne," she grins. "Your flattery is one hundred percent justified, though. There are _very few_ places in this city I can't access. Justice knows no walls. Or, well, corporate-sponsored witch hunts know no walls, more like."

As Olga runs through the liftoff process and turns the aircraft around to face the center of the city, her voice is fresh and determined. "Next stop: Mnemopolis, Neo-Paris's very own monument to everyone too rich to have a real job. Let's just hope they haven't gotten around to revoking my access codes since I took up the whole 'domestic terrorism' thing..."

"Right," Nilin says uncomfortably. "Your change of heart."

She laughs easily, and they fly in silence for a few minutes before she begins, "Not like I'm pinning my entire livelihood on the outcome of this fight or anything, but seriously: are you feeling up to this? 'Cause you seem a little off--"

"Olga," Nilin says, weary and trying to shove aside the guilt that's suddenly squirming in the pit of her stomach. "Don't worry about me. If there's one thing I'm sure of, it's that I'll do what needs to be done. No choice but to keep moving forward."

Olga gives her a sharp glance over her shoulder. "Do actually try not to die, though. You're too important to this whole stupid cause to let your ego get in the way. So, y'know, if you need some help, I _am_ pretty good at stabbing people in the face. I'll even give you a Fuck These Bastards In Particular discount. Free stabs! Supplies are limited, call now."

The cockpit goes quiet, and Nilin can feel words starting to bubble up, and Edge's voice cuts in almost frantic as he says, "Sis, what you're thinking of doing, don't--" but she mutes his line and charges ahead anyway with the decision she can't remember consciously making.

"You shouldn't be offering to help me. I remixed you," she confesses, all in a rush. "Two days ago, in Tommy's bar, with your knife at my throat. Made you think David had been killed and then you came over to our side. Edge-- no, _I_ decided to do it. I cracked open your head and changed your memory in self-defense, and I've been taking advantage of it ever since."

Olga's hands clench on the controls and the craft shudders to a stop in midair. Nilin clutches the edge of the seat and waits for the cold bite of her knife, or the hiss of the airlock, or _something_ \-- but after a long moment Olga just takes a deep breath and nudges the ship forward, still on its course to Mnemopolis.

"What're you--"

"Unless you fucked with _everything_ in my mind, I hated Memorize long before you got to me," Olga interrupts in a mutter almost inaudible under the hum of the engines.

"But..." If she'd given any thought to it, this is definitely _not_ what Nilin would have expected. "Forty-eight hours ago, you _worked_ for them."

"And they ruined my husband's _life_!" She breathes in through her nose, then brings herself back under control. "Okay, so it was _his_ decision to start loading our targets' memories into his head. But they're the ones that made that possible, and they sure as shit didn't stop him, not even when he began to break down. Didn't give a damn so long as we came back with whatever head on a platter they wanted that day. And when he couldn't keep it together any longer, what'd they do? Sent us to a _Memorize_ -run hospital to pay through the _nose_ for _stupid_ treatments by a _creepy_ sadist with a God complex that _didn't even work_. Played us like a pair of _fucking_ fools."

There's a pause, and Olga's anger visibly ebbs.

"... If Quaid didn't terminate him," she says, trembling slightly, "what _did_ happen?"

Nilin owes her this much, at the very least. "He was sedated. Doctor said the results looked promising, but he'd need a lot more treatment, a lot more _expensive_ treatment, and the contract hit on me came in, and you told him to go ahead, you could cover the costs, and then you left to track me down and that's all I saw."

"And then there was that explosion at the Nymphéa," Olga continues slowly, "or he was taken for the reconversion project, or he continued to deteriorate anyway... The man I love is still gone. My enemy hasn't changed."

"I thought you'd hate me," Nilin says, half-broken. "Why don't you hate me?"

"I _do_!" Olga shouts, her knuckles white and bloodless on the controls. "I should. I _want_ to. But David and I... we... I spent all my time hunting down you and your _comrades_ , and taking my paychecks, and looking the other way whenever Edge was on the news, whenever David woke up and didn't recognize me because he had so much of someone else's brain inside of his. I can't ignore it any longer. Every message the Errorists have sent has been _right_. Memorize is at fault for all this, for everything that's been taken from me."

"I _am_ truly sorry," Nilin says quietly, after a moment. "About the remix. About David."

Olga shakes her head. "It's not just _David's_ life I blame them for ruining. Those memory transfusions... I can't describe them. Like pouring myself into a black hole. I _know_ we must've had good times, because I _love_ him, and why else would I have gone through so much pain and paid so much money? But I can't-- I can't remember hardly any of them. Gave them all away to a madman in a white coat and a man who was already half-dead. All I've got left is the fights, the petty annoyances, the sicknesses." Her mouth is set in a firm line. "I don't regret trying to save him. But I can't deny that _trying to save him_ is why I'm not grieving right now, I'm just bitter." She laughs under her breath, entirely humorless. "They took my husband, and then they took my right to be sad that he's gone."

The tower looms in front of them and Olga sets the landing autopilot to dock in Bay 06 before twisting in her seat to stare at Nilin with fire in her eyes. " _Swear to me_ ," she hisses. "Swear to me you'll bring everything crashing down, and I won't get revenge for what you did."

"I'll finish this or die trying," she promises. "But, if you want to find me after-- it's your right. I won't stop you."

Olga draws away and blinks in surprise, then turns back around to supervise the docking procedures. "You're not half bad, memory hunter," she laughs, short and sharp. "Maybe we could've been friends, if..."

"Yeah," Nilin murmurs, unlatching her harness as the craft hits the floor of the freight lift with a jolt. "If."

* * *

As it turns out, the Conception Cube is almost insultingly easy to hack into. She didn't even _need_ Trace's memories, really; he was already a shattered man, and if the Mourners hadn't shown up to eat his past and block her path she probably wouldn't have bothered. They're simple codes, more of a formality than anything. Of course. It's _Charles's_ baby and _Charles's_ home and _Charles_ could never imagine the scope of man's inhumanity to man, _no_ , not the _brilliant_ innocent humanist slowly choking the world to death.

Perhaps she is a little more resentful than the situation warrants.

It does honestly rankle her, though, that the codes are so personal (might as well be his _birthdate_ or his _family's names_ or why not just _password123456_ since he's _clearly_ not putting in any effort to his company's security), that a man like Trace was allowed to know them, that her father still sees her as nothing more than a child with uncomplicated motivations. Does he really think so little of her, after all she's done since leaving home?

She doesn't have the slightest _clue_ of the answer to that question. There are holes in her memory Nilin still can't explain, missing pieces from when she was young and newer memories gone fragile without the foundation of her childhood, dissolving at a touch before she can get a good look at them. Her father's face shows up nowhere; she'll recognize him only from the billboards. This all-encompassing lapse is more than a little suspicious.

She twists the final hologram into place, and the catwalk unfolds before her like the welcoming arms of a strangler fig.

The two Nephilim guarding the way are pointless, the reconverted Leapers that arrive afterward even more so, though it is rather troubling that they've managed to infect this close to the heart of the city. Why couldn't _she_ have just crashed through a window like them, yeah? Why did Edge have her wind back and forth like a plague, killing people and skewing minds and ruining lives? A quick briefing--you are the lost daughter of the wealthiest, most powerful, most corrupt family on the face of the planet, everyone is dying slowly, cut off the poison at its source--an aircraft stolen by some means, and _voila_. The horror brought to an end, a couple days and several thousand lost souls ahead of schedule.

_Schedule_ being the operative word. Edge has had this all planned out from the very beginning, she realizes. Every step a hidden meaning, a cascade of consequences. At this point, Nilin wouldn't be surprised to find that he _orchestrated_ her arrest, just so she would have no alternative but to follow dutifully. It's very nearly obscene of him, a young man pointing giddily at tragedy and saying _look, sister, what your family has done, see, sister, what your surname has wrought._

She is tired of the questions. She is tired of the shadows inside her skull. She is tired of these men dragging her around like a plaything--Edge, her body; Charles, her mind.

What lies before her is the end: to uncertainty, to suffering.

She is so tired. It will end.

* * *

The interior of the Conception Cube is vast and opulent and utterly sterile, and it tugs at the back of her mind; her body knows where to go, even if her mind cannot consciously recollect the path. She despises every statue, every artifice, and soon she is running with no concern for security measures, overloading each door lock in front of her in her desperate need to raze this place to the ground and dance on the ashes.

Everything changes when she actually reaches Charles, when she actually reaches into Charles's mind.

Nilin is not her mother--she looks at the unfamiliar face of her father, sad and lost and broken, and she can't help but feel pity. She wants to hold on to her suspicion and betrayal and anger but this damned _place_ is so heart-wrenchingly empty that she can't help but reach out, to her forgotten shreds of a biological family, to the guiding hand that has shaped her actions over the past few days.

Edge is nigh incoherent in his victory.

Her father lays his hand on the side of her head and returns her childhood, easy and painless, and in the data transfer she catches glimpses--the depths of his despair after her highly publicized arrest, traveling to La Bastille under false pretenses, removing all identifying memories of her true heritage from the prison servers with a surgeon's precision, remixing Madame until she forgot he was ever there, drowning himself in pale replayed flashes of a little girl's life the way some might seek the bottom of a bottle--bits of his mind she wasn't meant to see. It softens her heart, despite her best efforts.

Nilin enters the lift to the Memorize central servers, and before the warmth of her parents' love fades and collapses under the weight of the challenges to come and the blood on all their hands she wants to say something, anything, _everything_ \-- but the doors close, and once again she is left alone in a cold room with a single voice in her ear. There are no cobwebs down here in the cobalt light, no dust, no living things, just stacks upon stacks of servers shifting restlessly, jammed full of a culture's detritus and strung with throbbing memoriel tumors.

She has five versions of the same event layered on top of each other in her mind, and it's driving her mad. What she watched inside her mother's head, and what she twisted it into. What she watched her father watching through her four-year-old eyes. What she personally remembers from her youth, which _feels_ the most real even though she _knows_ it's false. What she gave to her father in retaliation, her little body lying broken on the wet asphalt. It's terrible and confusing--she is guilty she is scared she is hurt she is naïve she is dead--and this, this is what gives her the strength to walk through that maze of servers with old loneliness and cold certainty in her veins.

_I'll meet up with you_ , Edge promised. She lays her hand upon H3O's gently rotating golden bulk and says _hello_.

(It sounds almost exactly like _goodbye_.)

* * *

**Epilogue**

After everything is over, Charles wants her to move back home immediately, back to the safety of the Conception Cube, considering how dangerous the outside world has recently gotten. Scylla balks--even with her bitterness drained, she is ever the more sensible of the two--and, as usual, gets her way.

It ought to be Nilin's choice.

Nilin remembers the Conception Cube in its entirety, now. She also remembers the safe house tucked into a high corner of Slum 404 with its bare mattress and her work clothes and her stashes of prepackaged food and clean water for when she needed to lay low. She also remembers the latest Errorist lair clinging to the side of the Mériphérique, accessible only by a tangled network of hackable ladders, full of lively chatter and propaganda and black-market goods and vintage video games. There'd be clues to the location of the new one, if she went looking.

But, stronger than anything else, she remembers the hammered-together scrap metal roof, the scavenged neon lights, the scratched surface of the bar, the beat-up sofa in Tommy's place, and she's not sure if she's ever known a true home, but she thinks he might be it.

Her family is waiting for her, after all, and family isn't about biology half so much as it is about the memories shared, the bonds forged through circumstance and choice.

The decision is the easiest she's made in years.

* * *

Tommy listens at his door, peers warily through the peephole. The kid on his sofa gnaws at his ragged fingernails--he suddenly recalled some nervous habits at just about the same time Tommy suddenly recalled some old memories of betrayal and hurt and loss. Looking at them now, he can't imagine why he ever paid to get rid of them. They're painful, sure, but so _dull_ with time and distance.

Edge has gone completely radio silent in a way that sets a terrible well-worn sense of suspicion coiling in his gut. He and the kid were picking at dinner when they thought they heard a noise outside and Tommy swears to God, if Leapers or looters or traitors or whatever come after him _now_ , after _everything_ , he will _beat their fucking heads in._

There-- faint footsteps on metal. He shoots the kid a look and nods to the emergency exit hidden at the back of his closet and hefts the pipe he uses as a club in one hand, unlocking the door to his apartment and creeping down the hallway to the Leaking Brain.

But with just one glimpse of what waits for him in the bar, he drops the pipe, and he knows immediately that everything is going to be absolutely fine.

"Headache Tommy," Nilin declares, unable to stop the broad grin that spreads across her face as he rushes forward and sweeps her up in a hug. "It seems like a _lifetime_."

**Author's Note:**

> The last line is the first thing Tommy says to Nilin in-game. I thought it was a nice way to wrap things up.


End file.
